


Silhouettes

by Eloarei



Series: Day on the Horizon [5]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Alternate POV, F/M, Human/Monster Romance, Implied Sexual Content, International Fanworks Day 2021, Intimacy, One Shot Collection, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Series, Side Story, Size Difference, Wedding Night, Weddings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-12 02:39:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29377917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eloarei/pseuds/Eloarei
Summary: Side-stories for the series "Day on the Horizon", including extras and alternate perspectives.3. Left to their privacy, the fire grows hotter. (Spoilers for "Birds of a Feather" (pt.4, ch.5).)
Relationships: Fawkes/Female Lone Wanderer, Fawkes/Lone Wanderer, Lone Wanderer & Fawkes, Madison Li & Female Lone Wanderer
Series: Day on the Horizon [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1882009
Comments: 20
Kudos: 3





	1. Sandstorm

**Author's Note:**

> Hiya! While I have a ton of plans for this series going forward, I decided it would be nice to take a break and write some little side stories in the universe. =] I'll note spoilers in the summary for each chapter, but if you've read the previous fics in the series, none of these should be spoilery. 
> 
> (Adding the IFD2021 tag because LW/Fawkes is for sure one of my rarest ships! I hope a few more people take notice of it. ^^)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When a sudden dust storm pops up during their travels, Addisson gets the chance to take a closer look at Fawkes. (pre-series, no spoilers)

The oppressive darkness of Vault 87, coupled with Addisson’s own personal darkness at the time (still deep in mourning over her father, as well as mourning what perhaps her life could have been had she had the opportunity to choose her own path), prohibited her from getting a very good look at the monster she was freeing. She saw enough to determine that he _was_ a super mutant (but who would lie about that anyway?), and she heard enough to determine that he was unlike the ones she slaughtered regularly. Star Paladin Cross was wary of him, but Addisson trusted Fawkes with little effort; the mutants she’d come across before were not smart enough (and too proud, besides) to try to trick her. ‘Open all the other cages so I can get out’ was more of a raider-style trick, and probably most of _them_ wouldn’t even have been able to pull that off, brains so addled by Jet.  
  
It wasn’t until after they reunited outside of Raven Rock (Cross having apparently given her up as a lost cause) that she got better than a cursory glance at Fawkes, and even then it was not as if she could really sit and stare at him. There was far too much danger afoot, and far too many important things to handle. She accepted his help, _gladly,_ and they set off to save the world. Or the greater DC area, anyway.  
  
Her head was absolutely abuzz with various dramas the next few weeks, from Brotherhood woes to _goddamn aliens_ (she really wished she’d had Fawkes with her then), and most of her downtime was spent collapsed in an unconscious heap next to a banked campfire while her companion (or compan _ions,_ if she was lucky enough to have both Dog and Fawkes at the time) stood watch. And all that time, she was sorry to say, she barely looked at Fawkes.  
  
Well, that wasn’t quite fair to say. She _did_ look at him. She looked at him all the time. Before, during, and after battles, she had to know where her companions were. She kept close visual and audial tabs on him-- which wasn’t hard, given his size. But even during mealtimes, when they all sat around the fire while Addisson stuffed her face with whatever was most handy, her casual inspections of him only ever returned the same data: he was a super mutant who, curiously, wore an above-average amount of clothing. (She also noted, of course, that he smiled sometimes, which made the greatest difference.)  
  
But the first time she got a _proper_ look at him was also the first time they touched. Touch was not a common thing in the wasteland (not that it had been common to her in the vault either; she’d been hugged by Amara all of twice, and sometimes adults patted her on the shoulder, but that was about it, outside of her scant family). Friend and foe alike tended to keep their distance for any number of reasons, and even close companions (with the notable exception of Dogmeat) usually hovered a polite few feet away. And this would have remained the case, Addisson suspected, had it not been for a particularly potent dust storm that cropped up while they were out in the desert one day.  
  
_“Shit,”_ Addisson cursed, pulling her overshirt up over her mouth and nose in a vain attempt to escape the dirt that was suddenly flying in all directions. The storm had come out of nowhere-- or she was not yet familiar enough with weather patterns to have predicted it; either was likely. “Fawkes!” she called, coughing on the name as she glanced around for him.  
  
His hulking green form was lost in the dusty cyclone, the heavy sounds of his footsteps obscured as well. But then he was there at her side, looming protectively over her. “My friend, let us find shelter!” he called over the noise, guiding her close to him with one massive hand and leading them in a direction she could only trust was safe. She really couldn’t see a damn thing; she hoped Dogmeat was faring better.  
  
After a few minutes they came to a shack. It was tiny and missing a wall, but it would do for their purposes now. Addisson let herself be guided to the most sheltered corner and sat down, Fawkes following suit (and Dogmeat trailing in a minute later). They hunkered down with their backs to the opening. There was barely enough room for the three of them, but at least Dogmeat’s fur blocked some of the sand.  
  
Clearing her throat of mud, Addisson croaked, “Thanks,” and took a minute to breathe before bothering with anything else.  
  
The shack seemed to have been a tool shed. All the tools had been looted, but there was a rusted metal drawer and a wooden pegboard above it. Addisson turned on her pip-boy light, but there wasn’t much else to look at-- except for Fawkes, who sat knee-to-knee with her, hunched over to avoid the dirt that was still getting in through the missing fourth wall. The vibrant green light illuminated him strangely, painting his chartreuse skin a mottled emerald color and making his eyes glow a bright hazel.  
  
Fawkes didn’t shy away from the bright light, and he didn’t seem to care that Addisson was now staring at him. He mostly kept his own gaze fixed in the corner of the shack as Addisson looked over the rest of his face, for what she just realized was probably the first time.  
  
He was different looking, obviously. Different from a human, and different from, well… different from the dead mutants whose pockets she’d rifled through, at least. She’d never had the occasion or desire to get that close to a living one. The biggest difference from normal humans was the skin color, without doubt. His size and muscle mass were, in theory, the sort of thing that a human might achieve, if they were really devoted to it, though she had not ever had the misfortune of stumbling across any human so frighteningly large. And compared to other mutants, there was certainly a resemblance, but the lack of murderous rage (or hunger) when he looked at her was what made the difference so stark.  
  
But there were subtler things too; not differences exactly (because different from _who_ would be the question; just _different,_ like all people were from each other), but details that made Fawkes’ face what it was. He had a wide chin, and a wider jaw, and ears that weren’t especially well-defined from his head. There was a large, somewhat squashed nose above a mouth caught in a perpetual grin (or grimace) full of surprisingly straight teeth. His cheeks were rather hollowed, but his brow and forehead were so strong that even without the scowling mouth he would have looked like he was judging you constantly, if not for his jovial commentary.  
  
And all of those were details that Addisson had more-or-less noticed from the distances she’d seen Fawkes at before, though she hadn’t made much note of them, with all the worry and drama. If something wasn’t relevant to her survival, there was a real chance that she didn’t notice, at that time. And that was why she hadn’t noticed… this.  
  
“You really don’t have _any hair,_ do you?” she said, leaning close and peering carefully at where Fawkes’ eyebrows would be, if he had any-- which he didn’t. Addisson reached forward and didn’t think about the fact that it might be a little too familiar of her (despite the fact that they’d saved each other’s lives; there were just some things that weren’t a given), smoothing a thumb over his brow. Completely hairless, it really was. (And she had calluses, for sure, but not as bad on her thumb, so she could feel the absence.)  
  
Fawkes seemed startled for a minute, in a still and very silent way, like prey might be about a predator. “It seems not,” he rumbled very softly, the prey being forced to _respond_ to the predator despite his fears.  
  
Instinctively, Addisson did notice that Fawkes was uncomfortable, but it didn’t register as conscious thought enough to make her pull back as she should have. “That’s crazy,” she said, fascinated. She smoothed her thumb along his brow again, but he was just as hairless as the moment before. Entranced, her fingers and palm came to cradle his temple, and slid gently down over his cheek and to his jaw, thinking the pads of her fingertips ought to find some small traces of hair, regardless of what Fawkes had said. Humans had countless tiny hairs all over their body-- peach fuzz, she’d heard it called (though she’d never seen a peach before, and sort of hated the idea of a fruit that had humanlike skin). Fawkes truly had none of this, not even along his chin. His body was just a smooth mass; a bit dimpled and rippling in places where the muscle shifted underneath, but almost like plastic to the touch. Helplessly, she remembered warm dinner leftovers wrapped in cellophane.  
  
If Addisson was not caught up in her new discovery, she might have noticed that Fawkes seemed to be almost holding his breath. “Yes, perhaps it is crazy,” he said after a quiet moment. “But no more crazy than what makes up the rest of a meta-human.”  
  
Though her hand was still lightly anchored at the side of his face, Addisson finally snapped back to some semblance of reality and thought to look at Fawkes as a person, instead of a curious slab of flesh. She caught his eye, in response to his comment. “Oh, yeah, I guess not,” she said with a short laugh. “But still.”  
  
And even though she’d mostly gotten her head back about her again, she was still bold enough and curious enough when the thought struck her; she frowned at the idea, and reached up again, to Fawkes’ eyes. He blinked them shut reflexively, and she carefully passed her thumb across them.  
  
“You don’t even have _eyelashes?_ How on earth?!”  
  
“I cannot say how,” Fawkes replied, sounding a little amused himself, and now marginally more comfortable with the situation.  
  
_“But--!”_ Finally Addisson withdrew her hand and braced it against her thigh. “But how do you keep the sand out of your eyes?” she asked, almost indignant, as if _this_ was the one real issue she had with Fawkes’ being, the one thing about which she might complain to his creators.  
  
With a huff of laughter, Fawkes flexed the substantial muscles of his forehead. “I assume that is what my strong brow is for,” he said, brow drawing down over his eyes in a way that did indeed seem protective, whether or not that was the ‘intended’ purpose.  
  
A barking laugh startled out of Addisson. “Well, whatever works,” she said, grinning, as she returned his personal space to him (as much as possible in the tiny shack). “But, y’know, if it doesn’t work out, maybe we can find you some of those false eyelashes.”  
  
Fawkes’ grin-or-grimace widened. “I believe people already find me frightening enough,” he replied, mostly joking. “But I don’t mind waiting out the storm. There is nowhere else I need to be, so much that I would care to brave the dust.”  
  
The storm was still blowing in full force outside of their haphazard shelter, with no intention of stopping, though she knew it would subside eventually. And that was all right. It was as Fawkes had said; there was nowhere they needed to be at the moment. The endless chores could wait a while, and in the meantime there were certainly worse places and worse people to be stuck in close proximity with.  
  
“Yeah, it’s not so bad.” 


	2. Preparation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If it were left up to Addisson, she would probably show up to her own wedding in dusty traveling clothes with a rat's nest for hair. Luckily, she has a little help. (SPOILERS. Takes place during "Birds of a Feather" (pt.4), Chapter 5.)

Aside from the one long moment after he’d first asked her, when she’d temporarily been so stunned that she forgot how breathing worked, Addisson had retained her composure _admirably_ well, she thought. Given the circumstances, she didn’t think it would have been too out-of-line if she’d shrieked or cried or maybe fainted a little bit. It would have been out of character, but everyone was allowed to act a fool every so often, weren’t they?  
  
Anyway, she was a little proud of herself for not losing her cool entirely in the presence of her husband-to-be. He’d seen her in just about every kind of mood and situation (hungry, grouchy, in pain, delirious, and so on), but she still couldn’t help but want to save face in front of him when it came to something like this.  
  
So she was glad that it wasn’t until they’d parted ways to find witnesses that she tripped and had to lean against a wall for a good long minute, just to let her knees and brain stop shaking so much.  
  
It was _wild._ Was this really happening? Someone wanted to marry her, and that someone was Fawkes! Her dearest companion, the man who’d saved her life and had her back without fail. The defensive part of her brain (nestled in the back somewhere, but too strong to beat out, even in regards to those she trusted implicitly) tried to wonder if Fawkes really… knew what that meant? To want to marry someone? But she knew he was neither innocent nor ignorant, and that he pursued learning with a vigor that even Addisson couldn’t compare to (and that was what she’d been so praised for, out in the wasteland-- that sort of jack-of-all-trades willingness to learn and adapt). There was next to no chance he’d so much as mention such a weighty idea without having put a frankly absurd amount of thought into it first.  
  
God. He really wanted to marry her. He wanted _‘the honor’_ of marrying her! Addisson’s heart seemed to skip a beat, and her knees trembled again. What other man in the whole world would have said something like that? Certainly not the boys back in the vault. She imagined Butch proposing; the only way he’d have said something so flattering was if his mom had beat him over the head with a book of etiquette. And the other men in the wasteland? Addisson was pretty sure most of them couldn’t even read. She thought about _them_ proposing: awkward scavengers who were just impressed by her ability to kill things and make money.  
  
...Maybe Fawkes was a little too good for her, she thought. He was so unique among his kind. Hell, he was unique among humans. Not just strong and steady but smart and sweet, with a dangerously sharp wit and sense of self-awareness. He was… _special._ And Addisson? She was mostly just good at killing things and making money. Yeah, she followed directions well and was willing to _do_ instead of sit around and bemoan her misfortune, but anyone could get up off their ass with the right motivation. She wasn’t even cheerful about it, most of the time. She just pretended, so people didn’t slow her down. Not like Fawkes. He was good and kind and _wanted_ to help people, _really. All the time._ Addisson would’ve been happy to live in a cave away from the rest of the world. She wasn’t actually a nice person! Fawkes deserved better.  
  
Her shoulder was getting cold from learning on the hard metal wall of the corridor by the time she was snapped out of her spiraling thoughts by someone approaching from behind.  
  
“Um. Are you alright?”  
  
The voice belonged to Li’s assistant, Cadence. She was sipping a Nuka Cola, presumably on her way back to the lab area from dinner at the galley.  
  
“Yeah…” Addisson replied. “I was just going to see Li.”  
  
Cadence raised an eyebrow. “Bad cramps or something?” she asked, tilting her head.  
  
Addisson laughed. “Uh, no, I was just thinking.”  
  
“Must’ve been something serious,” Cadence said with a non-judgmental smile. She inclined her head further down the hall and kept walking, and Addisson followed, glad to have someone else lead the way for a minute. She didn’t explain the situation to Cadence; the woman didn’t seem to be expecting her to, which was something Addisson appreciated about her.  
  
When they got to the lab, Cadence wandered back to her desk to work on some after-hours projects, and Addisson nervously approached Li, who was tidying up in an adjacent corner. She looked up when Addisson approached, obviously wondering why her temporary assistant would have returned past the end of the work day, when she usually strictly adhered to the schedule she and Fawkes had set.  
  
“Do you need something?” she asked, in her usual straightforward manner.  
  
“You’re not busy, are you?” Addisson asked. Then she shook her head. Li was always busy, with one thing or another. “I mean, I was actually hoping you could help me with something tonight. Maybe.”  
  
Li frowned at Addisson’s unusual shyness. It wasn’t normal for her to beat around the bush so much, and the suspicious look she gave made it clear she wondered if maybe Addisson was in some kind of trouble. “What do you need?”  
  
Addisson smiled anxiously. “Well, um, I need someone to be a witness. To me and Fawkes, getting married.”  
  
She really didn’t mean to sound so much like a guilty child, but Li was the closest thing she had to a parent anymore, and she was all too aware that the pragmatic woman was not entirely enthused about the idea of her being so close to someone like Fawkes, who she thought of as a potentially dangerous liability (though she’d never said those exact words in that exact way). She’d had a hard enough time accepting that Addisson was romantically involved with him at all, and seemed stubbornly resistant to her assertion that he was a better partner than she could have hoped for. She didn’t really expect Li to just roll with this sudden development, which of course was why she was hedging more than she could recall doing perhaps ever before.  
  
Li seemed to hold her breath for a long few seconds. “I take it this is a new development?” she said eventually.  
  
“Of course,” Addisson replied on a sigh; she’d been sort of holding her breath too, eager for Li to say anything. “I would’ve told you, but he just asked tonight.”  
  
(From the other side of the lab, Cadence perked up. “What’s going on?” she asked, and drifted over towards them.)  
  
“So then the shirt was a success,” Li surmised, and finally her face held a trace of a smile and Addisson almost shivered in relief.  
  
Blushing happily, Addisson said, “Ah, yeah, I guess so. I mean, he stared at it for like… twenty seconds, and then he just set it down and, you know. Proposed.”  
  
“What’s happening?” Cadence asked, just having come close enough to be part of the conversation, but not soon enough to have heard any of the details. Context helped her make a fair assumption though. “He liked the thing? The shirt?”  
  
“A lot, it seems like,” Li told her, with an expression just this side of teasing.  
  
Cadence grinned. “That’s great! What’d he say?”  
  
“Uh, ‘marry me’?” Addisson responded, biting her lip and shrugging rather helplessly. “But with bigger words.”  
  
 _“Wow!”_ Cadence struck a good-natured hands-on-hips sort of stance that looked like the physical embodiment of _‘well would ya just look at that!’_ , and Addisson wondered briefly how Rivet City would fare when she took over the lab; would that level of friendliness be just too much to resist? “That’s great. Congratulations! Oh, unless…?”  
  
“No, no, I said yes!” Addisson assured her. “That’s why I’m here. Father Clifford said we needed some witnesses.”  
  
“Yeah?” Cadence asked automatically. “Wait, you’re getting married tonight? Boy, he didn’t give you a minute to change your mind, huh?”  
  
Li crossed her arms; Addisson thought it was kind of a miracle they weren’t crossed already. “It _is_ rather sudden,” she said, her natural suspicion seeping back into her voice.  
  
“It was my idea!” Addisson told them. “He’s way more patient than me, but I just…” She pulled her shoulders in and mimicked Li’s crossed-arms pose, hugging herself. “He’s so… _polite!_ It’s practically a miracle he asked in the first place. I couldn’t even get him to hold my hand in public for weeks, ‘cuz he thought I wouldn’t want people to know about us. If we waited, he might’ve talked himself out of it. I didn’t wanna give him another chance to convince himself he’s not allowed to have…” She gestured vaguely. “...Happiness. You know?”  
  
It was quiet for a minute, like the two other women were really ruminating on her words, and then Cadence said simply, “Well that’s sweet.” With a smile, she moved expertly on from their discussion of something that she clearly realized wasn’t exactly their business, and towards what _might_ be. “So, do you have a dress?”  
  
First a terrible white blankness came over Addisson’s brain, and then a creeping horror. “....Nnnnnnno? Oh my god, I didn’t even think of that at all.”  
  
With an amused huff, Li shook her head. “You just dove into this entirely unprepared, hm?”  
  
“Do I _need_ a dress?” Addisson asked, grimacing. She knew for certain that she didn’t own anything that could be considered formalwear, let alone something that might resemble the ornate white dresses of pre-war weddings.  
  
“Of course!” Cadence said with a laugh, while Li took the undeniably effective stance of invoking Fawkes’ opinion, asking, “Don’t you think he’d like to see you dressed up?”  
  
Addisson groaned. “Probably,” she said, even though the real answer was ‘almost certainly’. They’d never talked about that kind of thing before. For scavengers like them, clothing was function, not fashion, and they both knew it. But Fawkes had a fondness for pretty and delicate things. He’d probably _love_ to see her in a dress; he was a little old-fashioned like that. And, admittedly, the idea of being seen as pretty and delicate once in a while tugged at her tender heartstrings a bit. “But, where would I even _get_ a dress?”  
  
Li and Cadence shared a look between themselves. It was much less of a dilemma for them, given that they wore dresses regularly. The two sized each other up, and then Cadence said, “I bet I have something you can borrow. Hold on!” She hurried off in the direction of her room, and Addisson was left to stand there kind of awkwardly, unsure what to expect.  
  
After a moment of silence, Li gave her an appraising and only slightly judgmental look. “When was the last time you bathed?” she asked.  
  
“Uh. Not _real_ recently,” Addisson admitted. She knew this wasn’t nearly as shameful as it would have been back in the vault, where working plumbing and hot water were so much more readily available, but she still felt a little embarrassed when she _thought_ about it. She’d gotten used to infrequent sponge-baths, and thought she still might be cleaner than your average waster, but even so.  
  
Li wrinkled her nose, and said, “You’ll probably want to bathe.” At first Addisson thought the disdainful expression was about her supposed lack of cleanliness (and maybe it was, somewhat), but then she added, “What I mean is, it will probably be… appreciated.” It seemed like she had a hard time dragging the words out of her throat, like she really resisted even thinking about them. Addisson was fairly sure she wasn’t _so_ filthy that it made Li uncomfortable to mention, but it took a long moment of staring at the woman’s faint scowl to realize she meant that someone _else_ might appreciate it; someone who might get close enough (and closer still) to notice that she wasn’t fresh as a flower. Someone who might get close to Addisson in a way that many people might not like to think about.  
  
 _“Oh.”_ Face on fire, Addisson turned away from Li with an uneasy laugh and made a show of busying herself with collecting spare buckets from their irrigation supplies. “R-right, you’re probably right.”  
  
Cadence reappeared a minute later, as they were setting up a little partition near their supplies (which might have been draftier and less private for bathing, but was easier than dragging buckets of water to one of the side rooms). “Good idea,” she said, and then she laid two dresses out over a nearby desk. “Well, this is what I’ve got. I wasn’t sure which one would look better on you, but I think the fit is going to be the more important part. Why don’t you try them on after you’re cleaned up. I just had an idea, so I’m gonna run out for a minute. Be back soon!”  
  
“Uh, thanks,” Addisson said, glancing at the dresses with the spare two ounces of attention she had after lugging buckets of water around, fretting about smelling like weeks of wasteland filth, and wondering what Cadence had decided was so important to go do _just_ when she was realizing that they were in a time crunch. She was further harried by Li trying to manhandle her out of her overshirt without taking her pip-boy off first, and Dogmeat getting underfoot in his excitement.  
  
Li was not nearly enough of a micromanager to insist upon helping her with the basics of bathing, luckily, so Addisson had a few minutes of calm, once she was undressed. She stood in a wide shallow bucket to catch the soapy water she sloughed over herself from the other bucket, scrubbing with a rag in hopes of removing the evidence of weeks spent focusing on things other than hygiene. The water running off of her wasn’t brown yet, so she figured it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, at least. Still, that wasn’t anywhere good enough for Fawkes. With that thought, she paid extra attention to anything he might get his face near.  
  
Cadence returned again while Addisson was drying off, and this time she brought someone else with her. The woman’s voice wasn’t immediately recognizable to her (since she spent most of her time in the lab, or out in the ruins), but when she peeked around the partition she saw Mrs. Young being towed along as if by some sort of magnetic force.  
  
“Christie’s agreed to do your hair,” Cadence said cheerfully, once Addisson had wrapped herself in a towel and stepped out from behind the partition (just a little shy at being somewhat naked in front of, well, anyone).  
  
She almost asked ‘what’s wrong with my hair?’, but when she ran a hand through it and her fingers stuck in tangles, she had to grudgingly admit to herself that it could use a little work.  
  
Mrs. Young, Christie, gave Addisson a sweet, sincere smile. (Addisson didn’t know her very well, but she could tell that the woman was different from most of the wastelanders she’d met. She seemed like she’d have been at home in a vault, more so than Addisson had ever been.) “Congratulations, sweetie!” she said, sounding very heartfelt. “I know we’re not very close, but Henry always has very nice things to say about Fawkes, and I wish the best for you two.”  
  
Addisson gave Christie a smile much wobblier than intended, caught off guard by her sheer _niceness._ “T-thanks,” she said, almost certainly blushing again. This whole event was going to be so embarrassing that she’d really have to go find a cave to hide in to recover afterward.  
  
Though Addisson would have stood around and waffled all day, the other two women seemed to have a clear plan, and they wasted no time ushering her in the right directions. “Looks like you’ve still got some clean water,” Christie said, bustling around her cleaning supplies. “Let’s get your hair washed before you get dressed.”  
  
“Er, okay,” was about all Addisson could say as Christie had her kneel by the bucket so her hair could be dealt with. She felt like a doll, Christie’s hands gently but firmly pulling her head down _just so,_ kneading and combing through her hair like it was routine. Or maybe it was a dog she felt like-- or a child. She’d never had a mother to wash and brush her hair or admonish her for getting it into a tangled mess. That was probably why she’d always kept it so short. (But not short enough to avoid washing, unfortunately.)  
  
“It doesn’t look like you’ve got lice, at least,” Christie said cheerfully. “Actually, your hair is quite nice, even though it’s so short. Maybe it’s because you grew up in a vault?”  
  
“Uh, maybe,” Addisson replied, words echoing awkwardly in the bucket.  
  
From somewhere in the background, Cadence could be heard calling to Li (though to Addisson it sounded distant, far beyond the sloshing and the water dripping in her ears). “Madison! Which of these are we finished with? I want to do something with the ones we don’t need.”  
  
Li’s footsteps echoed as she joined Cadence over by the garden and they murmured to each other too quietly for Addisson to hear.  
  
Eventually the thorough washing was over and Addisson could finally sit up, while Christie went to work drying and combing her hair. She hummed as she went about it; it was the tune of ‘Jukebox Saturday Night’ and the cheerful sound put Addisson a little more at ease. Still, as the moments ticked by, she became more anxious. “I told Fawkes I was just gonna grab Li. He’s probably waiting,” she mumbled. “I mean, I _hope_ he’s waiting.”  
  
“Don’t you worry,” said Christie, fluffing Addisson’s hair this-way-and-that like she couldn’t quite decide. “Henry and CJ will be keeping him company at the chapel. And I’m sure he wouldn’t want to rush you, on a day like this.”  
  
 _‘No, probably not,’_ Addisson thought, though she still wanted to hurry to him.  
  
With Cadence and Li still fiddling with something over near the hydroponics (and they’d wrangled Dogmeat for some reason), Christie helped her try on Cadence’s spare dresses. They technically both fit on her body, though Christie had opinions about them fitting ‘correctly’.  
  
“The pink one seems a little tight in the shoulders,” she said, staring thoughtfully at the fabric that was bunching up at Addisson’s armpits. “The color is nice, but I think you’re a little bit too wide. Oh, I mean you’re _muscular,_ in the upper arms here. I don’t mean to say that’s a bad thing.”  
  
The vault-suit had always been rather one-size-fits-most, so squeezing her shoulders into delicate dresses had never previously been a concern. Anyway, she imagined most of her noticeable muscle was put on after leaving the vault (from carrying 12 pounds of rifle at any given time, and a hundred-pound backpack of miscellaneous junk), when she’d switched to mostly wearing men’s clothes for the sake of comfort and so people stopped pegging her as a vault dweller right off the bat.  
  
In the end they went with the green dress, which suited Addisson perfectly, because it gave her shoulders room to stretch. Anyway, she liked green. She was a little uncomfortable with how short it was, but after sitting around for half an hour in a towel, it felt like a fair amount of coverage, comparably.  
  
“You look lovely!” Christie said, once the dress was sorted. “The boots are a little… Well, they fit you, anyway.” It wasn’t exactly a compliment, but Addisson took it.  
  
“Looks good!” was Cadence’s opinion, when she looked up from the pile of plant cuttings she was working with. Li didn’t say anything about the dress, but she nodded, and that was approval enough.  
  
“What are you doing?” Addisson asked, trying to make sense of the flora they’d amassed. The pile contained cuts from the leafy and flowery parts of the fruit and vegetable plants they were growing in the lab. She recognized the wiry pumpkin and melon vines with their big thick leaves and yellow flowers, and the clusters of tiny white carrot flowers that looked like little explosions frozen in time.  
  
Cadence grabbed up a bundle of the flowers and held them out to Addisson; she took them automatically. “You’ve seen the old pre-war pictures, right? Ladies carried bouquets during their wedding. And I thought since we’re the only people around who have flowers, well, we might as well show off our hard work, right?”  
  
Addisson was briefly stunned that Li would have agreed to such a thing; the flowers were essential to getting these plants to grow any fruit. But a closer look at the flowers showed they had picked only males-- the more disposable of the two flower sexes. Their melon and pumpkin crops had already started their growth cycle anyway, so she supposed what flowers were left were just decoration now, regardless.  
  
“Not very diverse, I know,” Cadence said, “but we couldn’t sacrifice anything that wasn’t past pollination.”  
  
“No, it’s… really pretty,” Addisson said, smiling down at the bundle of flowers. They had a faintly sweet aroma-- or maybe that was her. Either way, they were nice, and she was glad Cadence had thought of such a thing.  
  
But Cadence took the bouquet back. “Well it’s not quite ready,” she said, and went back to arranging the bundle to her liking. The rest of them gathered around to offer advice and coo over Dogmeat, who’d had spare vines woven into his collar.  
  
“How handsome!” Christie said obligingly, like Dogmeat was a little boy getting cleaned up for the first time. (That wasn’t too far off, really, in Addisson’s opinion.) He wagged his tail and pranced happily at the praise.  
  
It took a few more minutes, but Cadence was eventually pleased enough with the bouquet to hand it over. “Here you go. Now, what are we missing?” She glanced around at Li and Christie, and they all cocked their heads at Addisson.  
  
“Short of new shoes, I can’t think of anything,” Christie said, though she reached out and straightened a wrinkle on Addisson’s dress anyway.  
  
“I think this should be more than sufficient,” said Li, eyeing Addisson critically but finding nothing specific to actually criticize.  
  
Cadence again glanced at the other two, conspiratorially. “Does she need _the talk?”_  
  
If it was possible for one’s blood to both freeze and burn, Addisson was sure that’s what hers was doing. “Oh my god, _no, please.”_  
  
Li scowled at Cadence for what she thought was obviously a tasteless joke. “I’d wager she’s familiar with ‘the birds and the bees’ after working in a botany lab for a month.”  
  
“But people aren’t quite like plants,” Christie mentioned sagely. “Even _different_ people.”  
  
With a laugh Cadence said, “Well, I _was_ joking, but that’s a good point. It _is_ different with people.” She looked somewhat sideways at Addisson. “It could be _very_ different.”  
  
Addisson’s face really was so hot it almost felt cold. “I’m not worried,” she said, which was both the most specific and most vague thing she could come up with about the subject. Lord, she was _not_ about to discuss with these people her feelings about… getting close to Fawkes. But they were all kind of looking at her like they thought she might.  
  
“Oh, I’m sure it’ll work out,” Christie said helpfully, at the same time that Li said, “But you have thought this through, right?”  
  
They all looked at her expectantly, and she balked. “Yeah, of course I have! I, I’ve thought about it _tons.”_  
  
Li narrowed her eyes at Addisson. “But you said he only asked you tonight. Is an hour enough time?”  
  
“Henry and I waited a few weeks, if that’s any help,” Christie said, and Addisson frowned because, unfortunately, it really wasn’t. It didn’t have any bearing on her situation. She didn’t know them very well, but she’d bet a good sum of caps that Henry hadn’t tried to storm a military base to rescue Christie; he hadn’t saved her from a gruesome death by radiation chamber; he almost certainly wasn’t a super mutant. And probably neither of them really knew what it was like to feel isolated from the big wide world they were supposed to be a part of. That didn’t make their relationship better or worse, but it made them incomparable.  
  
“It’s just…” Addisson huffed, annoyed that she couldn’t just _say_ all of that. She could, but they wouldn’t understand. Nobody understood except for Fawkes. “It’s not just about marriage exactly. Even if he never proposed to me, I’d still… I mean… I want to stay with him. I want to _be_ with him. He _is_ different. That’s why I love him.”  
  
There was silence for a good long moment, and then Christie cooed, “Oh sweetie, that’s very romantic!”  
  
At about the same time, Cadence went in sort of the opposite direction and asked, mostly seriously, “Okay, but have you _seen_ it?”, which was a mortifying question and caused Li to hiss warningly, _“Cadence.”_ If there was one thing she most assuredly did not want to know about, it was her protege’s mutant lover’s _parts._  
  
 _‘There are three kinds of people,’_ Addisson thought, grimacing.  
  
Cadence wasn’t entirely deterred, but she did respectfully refrain from making any more bawdy insinuations that Fawkes’ shape or size might (or should) be of concern to Addisson. “Well, anyway. I suppose if something isn’t--” She cleared her throat. “to your liking, there’s nothing forcing you to stay. Not that anything _could_ force _you.”_  
  
“That’s right,” Li said, finally in some kind of agreement with her assistant. “If you do go through with this, it’s still only as permanent as you want it to be.”  
  
Addisson figured that was supposed to be reassuring, and if she was having doubts then maybe it would have been. But instead she just found the idea unpleasant. The thought that she could find some single part of Fawkes or their life ‘not to her liking’, and then just… leave him? It put an ashen taste in her mouth. That wasn’t how she felt about him at all. She cared for him greatly, so much so that all the little things there might be to dislike (most of which were not _his_ faults, just circumstantial things) were brushed aside with almost impossible ease. Being with Fawkes made it easier to withstand hardship.  
  
Again, she didn’t know if they’d understand her, or if she could get that jumble of clear emotion out into clear words. So what she told them was just what she’d told them before. “I’m not worried.”  
  
That meant whatever they wanted it to mean, which was fine. She didn’t need to argue with them, or convince them. It wasn’t their lives in the spotlight right now. Addisson was the one who got to make this choice, and the one who had _the honor_ (using Fawkes’ words) of living with it.  
  
Li took a deep breath and then nodded, even though it seemed that she would rather have heard a different answer. Addisson’s confidence had always gotten her where she needed to be, and sometimes gotten Li out of danger as well, so it couldn’t be discounted, despite Li’s reservations. “Well then,” she said, straightening her own dress and her lab coat, “I suppose there’s no use putting it off. If you’re sure, let’s go.”  
  
She led the way out into the hall, apparently quite ready to get this strange situation over with. Dogmeat followed eagerly at her heels, while the other three women went after her at a somewhat more leisurely pace, glancing at each other.  
  
Once Li seemed sufficiently ahead of them, Cadence spoke up again. “Well _she_ might not want to know, but _I_ find myself curious. As a scientist, of course! ...So. _...Is_ it? You know. _Worrisome?_ The… ‘situation’.”  
  
With the bouquet in her grasp, Addisson couldn’t throw her face in her hands in an expression of her sincere mortification. “Oh, as a scientist,” she repeated, laughing faintly.  
  
The truth was that Addisson knew what Cadence was asking so boldly in such a delicate manner: was intimacy likely to be a problem in any way? And of course the implication was that, at four times Addisson’s mass, Fawkes might accidentally rend her asunder by doing no more than what husbands and wives were liable to do. The less steamy suggestion included in Cadence’s careful question was that perhaps it was the other way around, which might also be a problem: that nobody knew much at all about super mutants, but it was clear that they lacked hair, and the women lacked breasts, and given that nobody had seen any little mutant babies running around, did they perhaps lack _other_ parts as well?  
  
And the truth was that Addisson _was_ able to give her at least half an answer, if she wanted to. Though they’d refrained from… becoming very intimate (at Fawkes’ silent behest; he’d held himself in check with a steely, unbreakable will), they’d been close enough and often enough that Addisson knew the basic shape of him, and knew he wasn’t as sexless as some people assumed. The vault suit was a thick, durable material, but it could only hide so much, in the middle of the night, when bodies deep in sleep acted of their own accord.  
  
 _Would_ he rend her asunder? Maybe. But it was a risk she was (and _had been,_ for weeks now!) willing to take. (And it wasn’t that great a risk anyway; Fawkes was too gentle to ever harm her. He wouldn’t do anything that might cause her pain, probably not even if she wanted it.)  
  
But she sure as hell wasn’t telling Cadence all of this, even if they were friends.  
  
She cocked her head at Cadence and gave her a soft smirk. “Well, as a fellow scientist, all I can really suggest is doing your own tests, if you want to know that badly.”  
  
Behind them, Christie chuckled. Doubtless it wasn’t quite the same, but Addisson thought perhaps the woman empathized with having to fend off wedding-era questions about her sex life.  
  
Cadence sighed, exaggerated for comedic effect. “Well, there goes my research paper!” she joked.  
  
Addisson wandered close enough to bump her shoulder as they walked. “You don’t need to give up so quickly! There’s a whole city full of mutants just down the street, if you’d really like your questions answered.”  
  
“I’m sure _that_ situation wouldn’t be at all ‘worrisome’,” Cadence sarcastically admitted. “Ah, well. I suppose I’ll just have to live with the mystery. At least until you spill the beans.”  
  
Laughing softly to herself, Addisson just said, “Uh huh,” which was the surest response she could give to let everyone know she fully intended _not_ to do such a thing. Cadence could keep her mystery. What mystery remained to Addisson would soon hopefully be solved, and then happily remain between her and Fawkes forever. From there on out, what they decided to do and what they decided to tell people would be their choice. Everyone was free to wonder and guess.  
  
But one thing was sure to be obvious, in a few short moments: they loved each other and there was nothing anyone could do about it. 


	3. Coalescence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ceremony is over, but the night is still young, and Addisson's blood boils to meet its match. (SPOILERS. Takes place during "Birds of a Feather" (pt.4), Chapter 5.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I said, I didn't intend to write anything nsfw for this series, and _indeed_ I am leaving this at its T-rating because it's not much different from what a clever TV show with creative camera angles could accomplish, in my opinion. =]

When they closed the door behind them, a gentle exhaustion seemed to overtake her. The hotel room here wasn’t exactly home, but it was their safe place, and together there with Fawkes she couldn’t imagine feeling more at-home. She sighed comfortably and collapsed on the bed like a stone. By contrast, Fawkes sat very gently; that was how they did things.  
  
She could hardly believe it. They were _married._ Man and wife, Father Clifford had said, just before Addisson had dragged Fawkes down into a kiss right in front of all their Rivet City friends. And nobody had booed or looked any more uncomfortable than people sometimes were about public displays of affection. (Not that someone kissing at their own wedding was quite the same thing as a couple making out in a walkway when people were trying to get by.) They were joined together irrevocably, undeniably, not just in their own hearts but in the eyes of anyone who might’ve wanted to challenge them.  
  
“Do you feel different?” Fawkes asked, gazing down at her as he tugged his boots off.  
  
Did she? Addisson thought about it, but only for a short moment. It wasn’t a hard question. “Not at all,” she said, as she stretched and closed her eyes, pleased beyond the capacity of the word. Aside from being happier than she thought was possible, she didn’t feel like anything had changed. They were just as devoted to each other as they’d been before. The only difference was that now people knew it, and that didn’t make _her_ feel any different.  
  
“Then I suppose that means we did the right thing,” Fawkes said, lying back beside her. Addisson laughed to herself, happily unsurprised that he understood how much she had not wanted to change them.  
  
“How about you?” she asked, turning on her side towards him. “How do you feel?”  
  
Fawkes appeared to consider it for a moment, giving the question all the attention he seemed to think was deserved of anything she ever said. “I feel complete,” he told her eventually, and then pulled her hand up to graze with a ghostly gentle kiss. It sent shivers all the way through her-- warm shivers, hotter at her core.  
  
There were probably things she could say to him. Given how much he appreciated words, she probably _should_ have said something, something clever or romantic or affirming. Something that told him how much that meant to her, because she really was absolutely overjoyed that he felt something so _strong._ Completion. That was not a half-baked feeling, not a faint statement. Completion was not something that you could just _find_ out there in the wasteland. Most people settled for getting by; contentment if they were lucky.  
  
She said nothing. Instead she pulled him down into a deep kiss, tugging him on top of her. He did his best not to crush her with his weight, and she did her best to hold him so close that he had no choice. She _loved_ that he felt complete, but she knew they could be more complete still, and it started with Fawkes no longer holding back.  
  
He was a man of considerable mass; she’d known this from the start. It was not a fact she shied away from. Maybe it was his brain and his heart that made him so unique, but his body was just as much a part of him, and by no means did she want to ignore that. She didn’t love him _because of_ or _despite_ his body; she just loved him, head to toe, and every muscle in-between. Until now, he’d kept a great many of those muscles out of sight and out of reach, and Addisson was determined that, if nothing else, this would be the night he stopped holding them back from her.  
  
Sometimes, over the past month or so, she had wondered, just a _little bit,_ if Fawkes really didn’t want to take things further between them. Maybe he wasn’t interested in that sort of thing? It wasn’t unheard of, even among unmutated humans, and it wouldn’t have surprised her terribly if Fawkes’ unique physiology rendered sex a non-issue, like food and water had been (before she convinced him to take care of himself better, regardless of what he _needed)._ If he could get away with eating and drinking just a tiny fraction of what a human needed, then perhaps something already as auxiliary as intimacy was not even a casual concern. _She’d_ definitely gotten by without it for nineteen years.  
  
Admittedly, that was only because the opportunity had not presented itself thus far. (Butch coming on to her when she was seventeen did _not_ count as an opportunity, when she wouldn’t be caught dead with a hand on him. She wasn’t into people who bullied others for kicks, and she certainly wasn’t desperate enough to try anything with someone who made her emotionally nauseous on occasion.)  
  
But then when she became close to Fawkes, when they started sleeping together (which really was mostly sleeping, and just a little bit of… other… gently intimate sorts of things), she realized the opportunity was at hand. It wasn’t like she’d been on the lookout for someone, but there he was, and it was so clear that he was the one, the only one she’d ever felt lacking without, and she _needed him._ Not like she needed food or water or air, but like… well, like nothing she’d ever needed before. It was really a new sensation.  
  
And the funny thing was (humorous in a self-satisfying sort of way) that when she wasn’t having silly doubts about his physiology or preferences or whatever, she could tell that he _was_ interested. Generally, the way he looked at her and held her was deliberate and careful, soft, gentle.  
  
Oh, but there was a strength lying just beneath the surface, she could tell. And sometimes, _sometimes,_ it came out.  
  
Sometimes he held her to him like a trap, like a cage she couldn’t and _wouldn’t_ escape, at least until he realized how hard he was holding on, and made himself let go. She tried to explain to him how very safe she always felt in the steel cage of his arms, but she didn’t have his way with words, and he didn’t hear her.  
  
And sometimes he gazed at her with this fiery intensity, usually only when he thought she wasn’t looking. She recognized the desire in his look, because it looked just like she felt: warm, so warm and wanting, a look that reached down to the core of both the one who felt it and the one it was directed to. God but she turned into a flame when he looked at her like that, and it frustrated her that he hid it from her, because she wouldn’t have minded burning all her life if it was because of him.  
  
And _sometimes_ he kissed her like she was the only air in the world, like there was some secret buried in her chest, the answer to all his questions. He kissed her like he couldn’t believe she was allowing it, and he wanted to take every little bit he could get before she changed her mind. God how she wanted to make him see that she wasn’t going to change her mind.  
  
She thought he _probably_ saw that now, what with the whole getting married thing.  
  
And she thought she was probably right about him wanting her nearly as bad as she wanted him, especially now. She’d sort of expected him to resist when she pulled him on top of her, to hold back like he normally did, but for the first glorious time ( _almost;_ there had been a few passionate lapses in propriety) he let himself be molded to her, the whole long length of his front pressed to hers. Addisson’s heart beat so hard it was almost an exercise to contain it.  
  
Fawkes was indeed pretty ridiculously heavy. Addisson had expected as much. Lately her forte had been plant biology, but she knew enough about people to know that muscle weighed more than fat, and that super mutants were… basically all muscle. So, _so_ much muscle. Fawkes was crushing her and she couldn’t be happier.  
  
Addisson got the distinct impression that Fawkes wanted to ask if she was okay but, unfortunately for his sense of chivalry, they were locked together at the face and Addisson had no intention of relenting. She had her hands wrapped tight around the back of his head; if he had hair, she’d have been pulling it. Aside from a few moments where he leaned very slightly back, as if he was considering unsealing himself from her, he didn’t seem to mind that she’d trapped him so near.  
  
Really the only reason they stopped kissing at all was because Addisson’s heavy drum-beat pulse was heading steadily lower like a flood. She wasn’t even consciously aware that she’d hooked a leg around Fawkes’ back (and she _should_ have felt a little bad, because she was still wearing her boots, and probably digging her heel into his flesh), except that the action dragged a ragged breath out of him (and not because her heel was digging into his flesh; he’d later assure her that she’d missed his healing wound by a good few inches).  
  
_“Addisson,”_ he groaned, his voice less ‘gravel’ and more ‘boulder’. He looked her in the eyes, and she was struck by how vividly amber the dark ring of his irises had become as his pupils dilated. “You don’t know what you do to me.”  
  
She tugged him closer again, just to show that she _did_ know, and she was doing it on purpose. “If it’s anything like what you do to me, I’m not sorry,” she said, her own voice pitched so low (relative to her own normal, not to Fawkes) that it seemed to have been dragged straight up from the pit of her stomach. It certainly felt that way, at least, the absolute knots her guts were in.  
  
“What do I do to you?” he asked, and it was an entirely sincere question, devoid of the flirtation that, well, was probably unnecessary at this point anyway.  
  
“Not as much as you _could,”_ she told him, and kissed him again. He kissed back, but he seemed invested in getting a real answer. He leaned up on his elbows and rested his thumbs on her cheeks, the ends of his long fingers tangled in her hair (on one side, anyway; on the close-cut side they gently massaged her scalp). She sighed in slight but very endeared exasperation and scrounged for the words to _tell_ him before she showed him. “You make me hot,” she told him. “Like my blood is so far past boiling that it’s caught everything else on fire.”  
  
He stared at her like she was something wild, and she guessed maybe that wasn’t too weird, given what she’d just said. “Does that hurt?”  
  
She couldn’t say yes, not without worrying him. “It’s too good to call it pain,” she told him, scratching her blunt nails along the base of his skull. “It’s like… It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever felt, but I know it’s only half of what it should be.”  
  
Fawkes hummed and rested his forehead against hers. “A fire twice that strong might burn us alive,” he murmured, and the very specific crush of his body against hers told her that he understood.  
  
Laughing, she replied, “I think maybe that’s the point.” To be burned alive together, from the inside, seared by the heat of a fire ignited and stoked just by their desire. For their separate pieces to melt together, welded in a blazing forge. (There was some botany metaphor there too, but it caught flame before Addisson could find it. Flowers in bloom, green leaves reaching towards the sun. It was just too hot for the seeds to take root; this metaphor didn’t work with her brain overheating like it was.)  
  
“I think perhaps it is,” Fawkes agreed, nuzzling his face closer to hers in lieu of some other kind of closeness they could not yet achieve.  
  
The two of them were used to each other’s proximity, and they were used to navigating around each other, sometimes in small spaces, but this was still a place where they struggled to even know where to begin, especially because they didn’t want to part long enough to deal with the barriers that separated them. _‘We’ve got forever,’_ Addisson tried to remind herself. There was no need to hold on so tightly! But they wanted to, even if it meant they didn’t get to do the other things they wanted quite yet.  
  
Eventually someone moved. It had to have been Fawkes; Addisson was rather at his mercy when it came to mobility. He shifted enough of his weight off of her that she could twist about and fumble her boots off. Fawkes’ were already on the floor (nicely, unlike how Addisson’s were now in a pile, waiting to be tripped on later), so he very carefully took off his new shirt.  
  
“Thank you again,” he said softly, to preserve the warm gentle quiet of the room. “I like it very much. It’s the nicest thing anyone has ever given me.”  
  
“I thought maybe, y’know, my hand in marriage might have beat it,” Addisson jokingly suggested.  
  
Fawkes folded the shirt and set it aside on the nightstand, where it might not get wrinkled. “It _is_ dear to me,” he said. “But it is different. Our marriage is something we share. I would share this shirt with you, if you wanted, but I doubt that it would fit well.”  
  
She knew it wouldn’t either; she’d end up looking like a ghost. “It’s alright,” she told him. “I don’t need it now anyway.” And to demonstrate that, she reached back to awkwardly undo the clasp on her borrowed dress and then shimmied out of it. It wasn’t a very practiced motion, so it ended up looking far less seductive than she’d hoped it would. Even so, Fawkes stared at her like she was a present unwrapping itself, a lot like the way he’d looked at her when she first appeared before the ceremony. His perfectly straight teeth peeked out from behind slightly parted lips, and he swallowed so heavily that Addisson could see his adam’s apple bob, even under the thick skin of his throat.  
  
(And despite his being completely in awe of the vast amount of skin she was now showing, he still reached to take the dress from her before she could toss it on the floor. Without taking his eyes off her, he laid it across the nightstand, and she couldn’t help being completely endeared by how conscientious he was. Cadence would probably appreciate it too, getting her dress back without undue wrinkles.)  
  
“May I touch you?” he asked, sounding just the slightest bit hesitant, like this wasn’t the exact time he was _most_ allowed to touch her.  
  
“I think I might die if you don’t,” Addisson replied, biting her lip. Maybe that was a slight exaggeration, but what was a little bit of hyperbole on a night like this? She wouldn’t die if he didn’t touch her, but she might shudder apart in her anticipation and the strangeness of being so exposed.  
  
She held her breath as he obligingly reached for her, and she didn’t know what to think when he laid his massive hands on her shoulders instead of anywhere else he might put them. But patience was his forte, wasn’t it? He stroked his thumbs along her neck, the sensitive curve of her collar bone just above her pale chest, and ever so soft across her arms, grazing the ticklish undersides. He wandered down to hold her hands in a delicate grasp, fingertips in the crease of her palms. After a moment he moved his hands to her sides, just under her arms (politely avoiding tickling her there), and wrapped them around her back, almost as if he were going to pick her up. His hands were so large they nearly encircled her at the thinnest point of her waist, where they came to rest after their travels.  
  
“Sometimes I find it surprising,” he began, “that so much life is held in this one small thing.”  
  
A startled laugh burst from Addisson, though it was soft enough not to be jarring in the quiet of the room. “There are a lot of people smaller than me.”  
  
“Yes,” Fawkes rumbled. “But they are not you.”  
  
In the way of compliments, it wasn’t as clear as it might have been. It wasn’t ‘you’re beautiful’, or ‘I love you’, but from Fawkes it felt as deep as groundwater.  
  
His hands on her waist were nice, but it still felt like he was holding her at a distance, and of all the things she wanted this night, distance was not one of them. Fawkes was so patient; he took the kind of time with things that only someone capable of living centuries could do, and while Addisson could sit still when needed (to wait out a target, or line up a shot) she wasn’t sure she had the sort of patience needed to wait for Fawkes to make all the moves she was anticipating. He’d do it eventually, she thought, but would it be before her blood burned up entirely?  
  
With a firm grip (still no more than a suggestion to someone as strong as Fawkes), she moved his hands lower until he was cupping her butt cheeks, and with that support she moved to straddle his legs, bringing them close again. His fingers stroked absently over the very soft fabric of her underwear, and when she leaned her chest against his she could feel his heart pounding.  
  
“You’re… much warmer than usual,” he said, sounding like for once the words weren’t coming easily to him.  
  
She kissed his collarbone, which was about all she could reach. “I told you, you burn me up.” With his hands secured firmly on her backside, she could put hers anywhere she wanted. Unfortunately, nearly every interesting new place was out of reach, which was the only thing she disliked about his size. She settled on holding him at his waist, where his so-called ‘love handles’ would be if he had an ounce of fat on him. Her fingertips moved to the edge of his waistband, which was so tight she couldn’t dip beneath it without risking cutting off circulation. “God, are these pants painted on? How do you have any feeling below your waist?”  
  
A rough chuckle rumbled through his chest, and subsequently hers. “I cannot say how, but I promise that I do. ...Very much so. And I admit that they do feel a little tighter than normal, this evening.”  
  
Addisson did _not_ look down into the space between them, but she felt a hot shiver run through her again. “I mean…” She swallowed and cleared her throat. “Maybe you should take them off then.”  
  
Fawkes squeezed the double handfuls of flesh he was holding in response; she couldn’t tell if it was automatic or on purpose. “Is that what you really wish me to do?” he asked. He licked his lips and all Addisson could think was _‘thank goodness.’_  
  
_“Fawkes,”_ she said, squeezing him right back. Then she had a better thought, a thought that was sure to make him feel some sort of way. “My love. My _husband._ I’ve wanted it _forever.”_  
  
Obviously ‘forever’ was a severe exaggeration, but she’d already committed to hyperbole today. If referring to, at most, a handful of months as ‘forever’ was the worst of her sins that night, she was pretty sure it would be fine.  
  
“My wife,” Fawkes said in answer, indeed feeling some kind of way, some warm and wanting kind of way if the heave of his chest against hers was any indication. “If the forever you have spent wanting this is even a fraction of the forever I have longed for you, then it would be cruel of me not to grant your wish, for I have painfully craved you many, many years longer than I have been blessed with your presence.”  
  
Addisson’s heart fought itself, wanting both to race and to stop dead at the same time as Fawkes’ words, no, his _declaration,_ flooded through her. “Oh my god, Fawkes, _please,”_ she said, trembling. “I’m already on the edge of losing it here!” She looked up at him, and went even more wide-eyed when he maneuvered her away from him so that he could stand.  
  
“Then I won’t keep you waiting any longer,” he said, his hands resting near the button that somehow magically held his pants together. Still, he hesitated. “...I am only concerned that I might not be able to get them back on, if I remove them now. They are as old as my shirt was, after all, and you saw how it had reached its limit.”  
  
“I’ll learn to sew you a new pair,” Addisson promised. “I’ll sew you a whole damn wardrobe! Right now? I say leave tomorrow’s problems for tomorrow’s us. If they break, you can be mad at me in the morning.”  
  
Fawkes shook his head. “I could not be mad at you.”  
  
_‘I know,’_ Addisson thought. He was almost unfairly forgiving of her, and her sometimes bad moods, and her decisions that went wrong. He was more forgiving than he should be, and right now she was going to use that to her advantage. “Then what are you waiting for?” she asked with a smirk.  
  
“I wait only for you,” he said, and then he waited no longer. With a bit of effort, he very carefully peeled the vault-suit pants off, revealing… well, _everything._  
  
Addisson made a noise that couldn’t be likened to any kind of word or intelligible sound. From head to toe she was both damp and had goosebumps, and it wasn’t fear that caused such a reaction. ...Or at least, not mostly.  
  
Well. _Well._ Nobody was expecting them back at work tomorrow, at least. If she had to convalesce in their hotel room for a straight week in order to recover, they could probably afford it.  
  
She pushed her hair back from her face in a nervous, excited sort of gesture. “I, um, never have been one to start small,” she said, grinning at Fawkes, who looked like he was feeling the intense heat of the world’s hottest spotlight. His face went a mottled orange color in blush.  
  
“I suppose you haven’t,” he agreed, taking progressively less-hesitant steps towards her until she found she had been scooped up into his arms and was being kissed soundly. Their bodies pressed together in a crush of molten metal, so hot she was surprised she didn’t sizzle. And as Fawkes laid them down on the bed (still so very gentle despite the sudden emotional rush), one conscious thought filtered through the beautiful haze that Addisson’s brain was melting into.  
  
_‘God I’m glad I learned to sew.’_


End file.
